Search for God is a major matter for any normal person, in any part of the world – in any language, race, nationality, place or stage in life. Cultural jungles have grown up making the search more difficult than it ought to be. The Apostles faced a monumental task of communicating to a world with limited true information about God. In our era, there is a serious overload of information that threatens. As the first was like a desert the present is like a jungle. As the earlier had too little vegetation, the later has too much. As the first may have given up for the paucity of information, the last may give up for the overload. As once the field was limited to only a few exotic, superstitious approaches to deity and the after-life, current generations are faced with a smorgasbord of religions, philosophies, and intellectual/emotional distractions, even competitions, that one wonders what to believe. There is an inner urge to believe in something, even if it is transitory to death as an ending. If it is only mortal, it seems nothing at death. For the individual, death interferes with meaning for humanism – that life is made a journey toward the wall of a box canyon.
What do we do with any issue, within the limitations of our human nature – a nature over which, on our own, we have so little firm control? If the issue is entirely natural in its experience, we try to resolve it with common sense, education, counsel, or with whatever tools may be available in natural life. If it is above natural (supernatural) then truth must be found in the context of the supernatural. This accounts for Scripture, prayer, holiness/sin, God – all requiring spiritual life in a redemptive experience of faith. This experience deals directly with human nature, a nature disengaged from God by sin that has entered the race, perhaps through some spiritual DNA/gene that belongs (strong or weak) to all persons. It must be attenuated or removed through a born again experience. In the Christian perception this is the only way for a fully self-conscious person to deal with spiritual issues with lasting effectiveness. If one honestly in contrition (sorrow for personal faulty nature) asks for acceptance to God through the appeal to Christ’s redemption that person is born again. We must remember that Jesus, in John, chapter three, continued God’s parable methodology which is interpreted in the oft repeated pattern related to redemption in Christ. The experience is the same for every Christian, but manifested in a variety of emotional responses. It is ultimately verified in the life and witness of the person following so as to prove legitimate experience.
The text above from Acts 17 may be especially attractive to cerebral readers. The Apostle Paul gave a masterful speech on Mars Hill, a site where eminent Greek minds engaged in debate. He began with a relevant point. The Greeks, in dealing with gods and philosophies, erected a memorial to an Unknown God. Paul would give that God identity – Christ, with a message for mankind. It is important, I believe, that in this form of homiletics (sacred rhetoric) the Apostle did exactly what he ought to have done. That is, to outline what God instructs mankind to do in the light of the discovery of a personal God. Paul, with the insight of an intellectual searcher, addresses the likely objection in the first phrase of this sentence, known to us as Acts 17:30: and, announces the message to heed in the second phrase: In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. In a sweeping statement Paul rids the debate of some objections. What about these people, or those? What about this idea or that? The Apostle leaves any exceptions with God. If there are exceptions they are God’s business. One would not want to risk evaluation by exception. So, to be sure from mankind’s point of view the straightforward seeker, even if in humble faith, repents and is accepted of Christ.
Decades ago I was a speaker in a team that included the eminent Wilbur Smith, then professor at Fuller Seminary. He was entirely taken with the Mars Hill speech of the Apostle. In another conference, I teamed with a speaker who felt the Apostle might have felt the Mars Hill experience a failure when he wrote to the Corinthians about avoiding enticing words of man’s wisdom. He argued that failure with the Athenians was because Paul was too sophisticated in his presentation – too cultivated, perhaps too scholarly. Smith has the best of it in comparison. We seek clarity for audience analysis based on the claims and consequences. The Apostle did that. Human success or failure does not dictate truth. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020